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But that is their sad bitter old white man egotistical view of good government. Intellectually lazy americans on the right and left who say Obama has done nothing should go back to school and learn to think critically. If the Republicans continue to obstruct any government - and not much gets done, and the country still puts them back in the white house in 2 years, then the US if filled with idiots and deserves what it gets. The rationales for the Republican uptick last week, getting the House, are built on swamp water ignorance. People are cows.

Logged

“From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” 1875 K Marx

All of the Obama actions I read are forecast, once paybacks are (projected) complete, less than Poppy Bush Savings & Loan bailout of the early 90's. Ain't it grand how both Bush's had major financial implosions on their watch, caused bailouts, then scream "socialist" when the liberals have to come along with a broom to clean up after them? How they are able to convince anyone that they're fiscally conservative is beyond me, other than that their tea party base is absolutely brain dead (or sniffing glue).

GOP to attack health care law 'piece by piece'Republican leaders say they'll use all tools available to cripple 'Obamacare'

WASHINGTON — As they seek to make good on their campaign promise to roll back President Obama’s health care overhaul, the incoming Republican leaders in the House say they intend to use their new muscle to cut off money for the law, setting up a series of partisan clashes and testing Democratic commitment to the legislation.

Republicans, who will control the House starting in January but will remain in the minority in the Senate, acknowledge that they do not have the votes for their ultimate goal of repealing the health law, the most polarizing of Mr. Obama’s signature initiatives.

But they said they hoped to use the power of the purse to challenge main elements of the law, forcing Democrats — especially those in the Senate who will be up for re-election in 2012 — into a series of votes to defend it.

Republican lawmakers said, for example, that they would propose limiting the money and personnel available to the Internal Revenue Service, so the agency could not aggressively enforce provisions that require people to obtain health insurance and employers to help pay for it. Under the law, individuals and employers who flout the requirements will face tax penalties.

Moreover, Republican leaders said, they plan to use spending bills to block federal insurance regulations to which they object. And they will try to limit access to government-subsidized private health plans that include coverage of abortion — one of the most contentious issues in Congressional debate over the legislation.

Those are just a few examples of the ways in which newly empowered House Republicans plan to use spending bills to pressure Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats to accept changes in the law.

Given their slim majority, Senate Democrats must stick together if they want to avoid sending Mr. Obama spending bills and other legislation that he would feel compelled to veto, setting up the prospect of a broader deadlock and, in an extreme situation, a government shutdown.

'Piece by piece'The House Republican whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, described the strategy this way: “If all of Obamacare cannot be immediately repealed, then it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece, blocking funding for its implementation and blocking the issuance of the regulations necessary to implement it.”

“In short,” Mr. Cantor said, “it is my intention to use every tool at our disposal to achieve full repeal of Obamacare.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he, too, wanted to shut off money for the new law.

Mr. Obama has made clear that he will fight to preserve all the fundamental elements of the law. When asked if the president would veto legislation to cut off money, his spokesman, Robert Gibbs said, “I don’t think we’ll get to that.”

Both sides said they were determined to avoid a government shutdown like the one in 1995 that, by many accounts, did political damage to House Republicans and Newt Gingrich, who was then speaker.

Anticipating the Republican assault, White House officials said Mr. Obama would emphasize how the law protects consumers and gives them more control of their insurance. Administration officials are working with Senate Democrats to arrange hearings at which consumers would explain how they have already benefited from the law.

One of the president’s strongest allies is Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, an architect of the law. Mr. Harkin said he would “fight any attempt to defund the law or repeal its consumer protections.” He is well placed to lead such resistance. He is chairman of the Senate’s health committee and of its Appropriations subcommittee responsible for health programs.

Unlimited restrictionsThe number and variety of restrictions Congress can impose in spending bills is almost unlimited. A bill passed by the House last year, for example, stipulated that no federal money could be used to buy light bulbs unless they met certain energy efficiency standards. The same bill said, “No funds appropriated in this act may be used for the transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance in any school.”

House Republicans could easily pass similar provisos stating that no federal money could be used to carry out specific sections of the new health care law.

By attaching the restrictions to appropriations bills, House Republicans can force negotiations with the Senate. The Hyde amendment, restricting the use of federal money to pay for abortion, began as such a rider more than 30 years ago.

House Republicans said their efforts were inspired, in part, by the words of Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who died this year. Mr. Byrd described the power of the purse as “one of the most effective bulwarks ever constructed” to shackle the hands of an overreaching executive.

Even if judges uphold the constitutionality of the law, federal officials will still need money to administer and enforce it. And that is where House Republicans see an opportunity to assert their influence, with a real possibility of a stalemate.

'Unclear how we will fare'The White House has provided money to states to help them get ready — to scrutinize increases in insurance premiums and to set up regulated markets known as insurance exchanges. In addition, the law provided $1 billion for “federal administrative expenses.” But that is far less than will be required.

The Congressional Budget Office says the Internal Revenue Service will need $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years to determine who is eligible for tax credits and other subsidies intended to make insurance affordable. The Department of Health and Human Services will need at least that much to carry out changes in Medicaid, Medicare and the private insurance market, the budget office said.

The law provided $11 billion for community health centers to serve 20 million more low-income people, including many expected to gain coverage under the law. Many Republicans, including President George W. Bush, have supported such clinics.

But Daniel R. Hawkins Jr., senior vice president of the National Association of Community Health Centers, said, “It’s unclear how we will fare in the new climate.”

The House Republicans’ campaign manifesto proposed “strict budget caps” that would cut spending for most domestic programs subject to annual appropriations.

The conflict over health care may be the biggest obstacle to cooperation between Mr. Obama and Republicans in Congress.

“House Republicans cannot enact legislation the president won’t sign,” said R. Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. “But the president cannot force them to appropriate money they don’t want to appropriate.”

This article, " G.O.P. Plans to Use Purse Strings to Fight Health Law," first appeared in The New York Times.

In Matt Lauer's interview tonight with Prez Bush about his new pop-up book, Lauer said 50% believe TARP was started by Obama. I'm glad Bush admitted to something and said he started TARP, because he was being told we were heading for another Depression.

Many have criticized Obama for holding back-room deals and not demanding more from Wall Street. I do think he should have put more rules on them. He should have pushed to make the mortgage modifications mandatory. From what I understand, the banks have done few modifications. I do know the banks were paid at least $1,000 per customer to work on the modifications. I've been trying to find out whether they got that money whether they approved the modification or not. I'm not so sure they didn't take that money to "work" on them only to deny them or not even really work on them at all.

Given the election results, the question Barack Obama has to decide for himself is whether he really wants to be president in the fullest sense. Not a moderator for earnest policy discussions. Not the national cheerleader for hope. Not the worthy visionary describing a distant future. Those qualities are elements in any successful presidency, and Obama applies them with admirable skill and seriousness.

What's missing with this president is power—a strong grasp of the powers he possesses and the willingness to govern the country with them. During the past two years, this missing quality has been consistently obvious in his rhetoric and substantive policy positions. There is a cloying Boy Scout quality in his style of leadership—the troop leader urging boys to work together on their merit badges—and none of the pigheaded stubbornness of his "I am the decider" predecessor, nor the hard steel of Lyndon Johnson or the guile of Richard Nixon.

Obama has patience and the self-confidence not to insist that his solution is the best and only one. On many vital questions, he went so far as to not even say what his solution was. Such a governing style is too nice for real-life politics, where Boy Scouts get their heads handed to them.

Some politicians may enjoy Obama's generous spirit, but many despise him for it. Washington always takes the measure of a new president and tests him early on. Congress and the surrounding power centers, swiftly reading weakness in this president, decided they would fill the vacuum Obama left for them.

A friend and longtime warrior for liberal reforms described what unfolded in harsh but accurate terms: "First he was rolled by the bankers, then he was rolled by the generals, then he was rolled by the Blue Dogs and other Democrats who had no interest in going along with what he proposed." Obama seemed exceedingly tolerant of resisting forces and even cooperated with them. Or maybe he privately agreed with them. He never made it clear.

Perhaps because he was young and relatively inexperienced, Obama surrounded himself with savvy veterans of Washington's inside baseball. He inherited his economic advisers from Robert Rubin, his political team from former Senate leader Tom Daschle and center-right Clintonistas like Rahm Emanuel. Together with old friends from the academy, the administration was overstaffed with intellectual abstraction and short on street-smart politicians, especially any harboring liberal instincts. That pretty much ruled out the "change" many voters had expected. It produced a tone-deaf seminar of policy thinkers in which Obama assumed he was hearing all sides.

Republicans, who are masters of deceptive marketing, seized on Obama's most appealing qualities and turned them upside down. Their propaganda cast him not as soft but as a power-mad (black) leftist, destroying democracy with socialist schemes. The portrait was so ludicrous and mendacious, the president's party hardly bothered to respond. Egged on by the Republican Party and Fox News, right-wing frothers conjured sicko fantasies and extreme accusations: the president is not only a black man (bad enough for the party of the white South); he is not even American. The vindictive GOP strategy is racial McCarthyism, demonizing this honorable man as an alien threat, just as cold war Republicans depicted left-liberal Democrats as commie sympathizers.

Even Obama supporters began to ask, Where is the fight in the man? Some critics blame a lack of courage, but that neglects the extraordinary nerve Obama displayed in his rise to the White House—a young black man with an unusual name and limited experience who triumphed through his audacity. Obama's governing style is a function of his biography—a man who grew up always in the middle, both black and white. He succeeded by learning rare skills, the ability to bridge different worlds comfortably and draw people together across racial, political and intellectual divides. He learned to charm and disarm, not to smash and conquer.

For the first time in his life, those qualities seem to have failed him. Indeed, he may have been misled by his high regard for his own talents. This is really his first encounter with devastating political defeat. The question now is, What will he learn from his "shellacking"? Possibly not much, since it is always very hard to rethink and adjust in midstream. But remember, this man is an unusually observant politician with a great thirst for self-reflection. One can reasonably hope that as he absorbs the hard knocks, he will make calculated changes in how he governs.

Bluntly put, Obama needs to learn hardball. People saw this in him when he fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and many of us yearn to see more. If he absorbs the lesson of power, he will accept that sometimes in politics you can't split the difference or round off sharp edges. He has to push back aggressively and stand his ground, more like those ruthless opponents trying to bury him. If Congress won't act, the president will. But first he has to switch from cheerleading to honest talk. Tell people what the nation really needs, what Republicans intend to sabotage. In a political street fight, you've got to hit back.

Only Obama can decide this about himself, but others can influence the outcome by surrounding him with tough love and new circumstances created by their own direct actions. It does not help Obama to keep telling him he did great but the people misunderstood him. He did lousy, not great, and in many governing dimensions people understood his failures clearly enough. They knew he gave tons of money to bankers and demanded nothing in return. They knew he thought the economy was in recovery. They couldn't believe this intelligent man was that clueless.

Popular forces can blow away the fuzziness. They can mobilize to demonstrate visible support for the president's loftier goals and to warn him off the temptation to pursue a Clintonesque appeasement of the right. Given the fragile status of his presidency, Obama needs to know that caving in is sure to encourage enemies and drive off disheartened supporters. People should, likewise, call out the president's enemies and attack them with the harshness that's out of character for him. The racial McCarthyism of the GOP establishment is a good place to start.

People who still have great hope for Obama can help revive his presidency, but only if they toughen up themselves. Stop holding his hand (he's an adult) and start building a people's agenda that compels the president to change his. Obama won't like this at first—his own supporters talking back—but he can learn to draw strength from their courage. If people fail to step up with their own message, the president will likely fail with his.

William GreiderNovember 10, 2010 | This article appeared in the November 29, 2010 edition of The Nation.Share1791||